


head full of ghosts tonight

by rioseco



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aqua (Kingdom Hearts)-centric, Bad Ending, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Darkling!Aqua, Gen, Growing Pains, Realm of Darkness (Kingdom Hearts), Scratching, Transformation, Wings, unintentional self-mutilation, ~Darkness Puberty: The Fic~
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-28 07:04:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19388980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rioseco/pseuds/rioseco
Summary: There’s a face gazing at her through the glass. A face, she thinks faintly as she raises a quivering hand to her cheek, that she can’t reconcile as her own. The figure in the mirror trembles, as if frightened byher.





	head full of ghosts tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Please mind the tags! There are descriptions of injuries, blood and the like, including body horror elements. I don't personally find it graphic, but everybody's tolerance and threshold for what constitutes 'graphic' may differ.

_i cannot say what years have come and gone_  
_i only know the silence - it breathed on and in_  
_...._

  
_...have I gone insane?_

* * *

In the beginning, there were phantoms.

As if the Realm of Darkness had peered into Aqua’s heart and unveiled her deepest desires, the Darkness smiled upon her and cursed her with immeasurable time and unreachable ghosts. A ploy, perhaps, to keep her spirits strong enough to weather the churning machinations of its game. _Terra_ , she’d whisper, fingers instinctually reaching out for a boy with shuttered eyes and a grim set to his lips. _Ven_ , she’d whisper at a paling figure with eyes clamped shut and shattered like tiny fragments of ice. The Realm of Darkness smiled upon her, and — oh. the boys vanished - slipping from her fingertips like so many grains of sand - and the Darkness, it beckonedher further into its wondrous depths, wearing their faces as a warm inviting lure.

....It was so very easy to bait this one.

 _Terra_ , she said, her voice catching.

 _Ven_ , she said, though she knew she could never reach him here.

 _You_ , she hissed, when her reflection in the mirror pressed thin powerful fingers through the glass and wrapped them around her neck hard enough to bruise. As if it heard Aqua gasp for air, her Master’s keyblade shimmered into existence, warm and familiar in her hand, and the heft of the blade slamming into the phantom felt — real…

Real enough that the thought lingered even after her first phantom vanished into thin air.

Real enough that she indulged herself in the fruitless hope that the phantoms of her friends might too, be real - at least for a moment.

It might have been for days, it might have been for years that she hunted her reflections and trailed after dark silhouettes, when finally she realized: the Realm of Darkness was _toying_ with her. The air vibrated with glee every time she made it one step closer to touching Terra before he turned away from her and crumbled to dust. The air giggled, giddy, every time her mouth quivered around the names of two boys she’d been starting to forget.

She wore callouses on her palms like marks of honor, and as she slashed through and vanquished yet another copy of a woman who looked like someone she should have remembered, she heaved back a roiling sickness crawling up her throat. In the beginning, there were phantoms and swarms of Heartless that could practically sniff out the light in Aqua’s heart. As if they could smell the _charge_ she infected the fetid air with, they wandered over to her like lambs to the slaughter and she slashed and she slashed and she slashed. Each Heartless she added to her kill count, she dedicated to Terra. Each final splatter of dark viscous fluid that she tried not to think of as blood, she offered as tribute to Ven. The memory of them was the only thing keeping her grounded, so it had become almost automatic. _Terra_ , she’d think mindlessly as she cast firaga. _Terra_ , she’d think again to gather the strength to continue. _Ven_ , she’d think as she performed a shotlock, clearing out an entire swarm of fire cores. _Ven_ , she’d whisper to gather the courage to rest in the unrelenting abyss.

The Realm of Darkness smiled at Aqua, charmed.

Then, the itching started.

* * *

It itches. It’s _been_ itching for so long now, she can hardly stand one more second inside of this body. There’s this awful heat that prickles around, featherlight, maddening, unrelenting right underneath her skin - especially at her fingertips - and she’s _livid_. Her nails, she drags them all over her fingers and her dry cracked palms in search of some fleeting relief, but it never lasts long.

She scratches and picks under her brittle, hardened nails.A tic, it seems, that had first begun as a minor annoyance and has now become a compulsion.

 _Terra._ She says to calm herself down. _Ven_. She says, because these days, _teh-ra_ is incomplete without this other syllable following suit.

Too much immeasurable time repeating the words like mantras in her head and it’s now far past the point that they’ve stopped having any real meaning. _terra. tear. a. te. rah. terra..? ven, ven… venvenven._ Sometimes she forgets. Sometimes they just turn into noise, little echoes of imagined sounds that aren’t words, but make for a decent enough distraction from the chittering scufflesand screeches of the unending swarms of Heartless. Bouncing around in her head. Familiar background noise. Familiar utterances in an unpleasant place.

Familiar faces she spots flickering into view just around the twisted bough of rotten trees and Heartless corpses - Ah, she remembers: _Terra! Ven!_ Her friends — Her… dear friends. A dependable friend. A sweet young friend. Not just noises, not mere hallucinations; she remembers: _of course_ , _I’ll come back for you…_

 _Terra._ She remembers the tall line of his figure.

 _Ven._ She remembers the warmth of his smile.

 _Dar-ling_ , the Realm of Darkness laughs silently, watching her scratch absently at her fingers.

These days, she’s begun thinking the Realm of Darkness is actually a living creature that has swallowed her up. Sometimes the paths she traverses, they fold in on themselves, twist around. A shabby wooden door ends up leading into a grand chamber full of inky twitching shadows and when she steps through the door again, she’s alone with just…a mirror. Always ornate in burnished brown and bronze filligree, always far too large, and never welcome. Some of the mirrors aren’t real mirrors; some of the mirrors have a terrible looking woman inside of its glass enclosure, but the woman is only a phantom of who she once was.

Vanity has never been a particular indulgence of hers, yet for whatever reason, the Realm of Darkness seems to enjoy contorting itself to ensure she repeatedly finds herself in front of another cracked mirror.This one, however, is a mirror that is not a real mirror.

She brushes bruised red fingertips abused and leaking blood from her constant scritching, curiously redder in contrast to her ruined sickly face. There’s a new face gazing at her through the glass. A face, she thinks faintly as she raises a quivering hand to her cheek, that she can’t reconcile as her own. The figure in the mirror trembles, as if frightened by _her_.

Her hair is matted. Dark. Sticking to her scalp in clumps of crusted blackened blood. It lays heavy on her scalp, dry and stiff and when she tries to brush out the old desiccated filth of grime, her fingernails catch like overgrown thorns in the tangles.

 _Irritating_. Her eyes flash, sharp, as the thing in the mirror tugs helplessly at its hair, its talons jutting out like tiny bloodied scythes from the brambles. When she’d first grown weary of the filth clinging to her, she’d found her way to a calm ocean shore. Yet when she dipped her fingers into the thick black ink, her skin _burned._ The flesh had been singed and inflamed by the hissing darkness and that was whenshe remembered: she was not welcome in this land. Her body, the still warm light inside of her heart, it could not withstand the corrosive darkness in such high concentration.

In that moment, she swallowed what little vanity she’d had. It would be fine. After all, she would get out soon enough; she _had_ to.

Now, looking into the mirror that is not a mirror and holding the level gaze of the filthy, wounded creature reflected in the other side, she wonders: how much longer can she take?

* * *

Her nails have been growing at an alarming rate.

She’d only noticed some time ago when she’d called forth Master’s Defender in anticipation of fighting a rather large darkside; it had all become so routine after awhile, her blade now accustomed to slicing through the thick meaty flesh of countless Heartless, dodging and springing like a tiny irritating insect just out of the heartless’s wingspan.

When she’d tightened her grip on her master’s keyblade, she’d faltered at once, because in that instant she felt the beginnings of what felt like _claws_ puncturing sharp white crescents into her palm. Tiny pools of blood had beaded up then - four perfect pins of wine that slicked over the hilt of her blade and smeared her palm - and she’d scrambled to catch her grip before another darkside could smack the thing away. A hasty swipe of blood at her dirt-stained leg, an instinctive leap and roll away from the slow-moving darkside, and she’d hissed under her breath. Not for the pain of the wounds, or the sting of hot metal under her raw skin, but for her own incompetence at letting the moment slip away from her.

Later, she tore at the tattered length of her skirt and wound the makeshift tourniquet tight around her bleeding palm. Four perfect pins of blood, staunched. Though the wounds eventually healed, she grunted and bound her hand anew in the old ruined cloth, teeth pulling the fabric tight into a knot and she flexed her fingers, open, closed, open, closed.

 _Good. It’s thick enough_ , she had thought grimly. She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

Now, those same claws tear and shred at her ratty, dirt-logged hair.She slowly, slowly, extricates the things, watching the figure in the mirror move just as methodically, and she runs the thick sharp nail of her thumb underneath her fingernails, pressing hard into the tender flesh. It aches and burns - it’s a complete _relief._

It’s been itching so much. _Constantly_. The only time she _doesn’t_ notice is when she’s in the heat of battle, because her blood burbles hot and thick like angry froth underneath every inch of her skin when she wields Master’s Defender and calls upon spell after spell.

She scritches impatiently, no longer concerned when the tiny pools of blood start prickling underneath her nail bed. Her fingers are stained a rosy color from her compulsive itching, but nothing ever quite kills the itch the way she’d like than pricking her fingers.

 _Terra_. She prays in her head, watching the blood drip along her fingertips. _Ven_. She thinks like clockwork, clenching her fist and shredding bits of the fabric still tied around her palm. Soon, the tourniquet will need to be replaced; her sleeves and skirt are already tattered and torn to shreds, turned black with the hissing darkness.

_Terra_.

_Ven_.

A noise - two noises - and even the figure in the mirror smiles, the blood red grin looking oddly manic against her bluish pallor.

“Te..rra…” She tries to say out loud, and her voice comes out like the creaking of a demon - strange, hoarse and high-pitched. _Horrible_ , she winces, but the noise is… She clings to it. It’s a good noise. A nice noise. “ _Ven…”_ She whispers, quiet and raw and _yearning_ , and the figure smiles a dark, tired smile back at her.

The air vibrates with delight, and this time, she can _feel_ the anticipation wrap around her.

* * *

It… itches. Her back this time - or rather, the spot where X marks the spot, between the hard planes of her bony shoulder blades. When she claws at the inflamed area, she’s disturbed to find a nub of something hard and tender stretching outwards underneath her skin. Gently, she smoothes her fingers around two aching identical… growths of what must be bone protruding like knobs emerging from her back. 

Something isn’t right here. The cavernous living womb of the darkness laughs at her, feeds her with damp, musty air - and she winces, trying to stay calm even though she has no idea how long she’s been trapped in this hell. _It’s okay. You’ll be okay._ She thinks. _Terra. Ven. They’re waiting for me…_

Her light at the end of the tunnel. Her saving grace.

Those familiar sounds are the only ones that keep her going through the ensuing nights (or perhaps they are weeks? months?) when she _screams_ because those - bones eventually rip through her skin like she’s growing another appendage and leave her wounded, tired, and dirty. The Heartless have been calm, as if patiently waiting for her to recover her strength. When she doubles over at the horrifying ache, feeling the long whitebone slick right through the freshly torn punctures in her back, a small Shadow Heartless hops over to her, its dark antennas quivering. Its eyes are soft gold, its large round face muted and tilting this way and that as it looks at her.

She doesn’t have the energy to call her Keyblade, and anyways, her master’s blade seems to have grown unresponsive - but in any case, it appears she doesn’t need to. The shadow Heartless takes a few tiny hops, a few twitchy steps towards her, its fleshy little hand outstretched and she half-expects the thing to slash at her with hard claws, but instead——

Instead the thing rests its twitchy cold hand on her leg and chitters, quietly, before hopping even closer to her. It tilts its head up at her face and — the thing, it sits down next to her prone body, resting its quivering hand on her as if in comfort.

She should kill it.

She should destroy it.

But… it’s… A little shadow Heartless like this would ordinarily pose no challenge, especially one so unguarded, and — well, even if it’s been growing near impossible for her to call Master’s Defender to her aide, she still has magic at her arsenal ( _and her claws_ , her mind helpfully supplies, to shred the thing to ribbons and sate her constant itch). But she’s been alone so long, haunted by noises that sound like they might mean something and faces, bodies that always appear right at the corner of her eye before flickering away into nothing but cold tepid air.

“Get away from me,” she hisses, weakly. “I’m not a demon like you,” she says, even as she feels the bones on her back unfurl into a tender, new appendage that beats weakly against her back. She curls in on herself, and she feels the things press against her, a sick damp flutter of thin skin and bone brushing against her bare skin.

The shadow Heartless cocks its head and stares up at her, curious, before making a small dismissive squeak. It stares at its overlarge toes, wriggling them as it leans back to rest comfortably against her body.

Once, the Heartless had been overly aggressive; they’d swarmed to her like moths to a flame and she’d slaughtered them one by one with glistening beams of light and quicksilver slashes of her master’s blade. Once, they’d come to her as if they sought to extinguish any of the harsh light left in her, eyes bright gold with the anticipation of devouring her heart.

Now, even the weakest of them seems to think her a comrade.

She strikes the thing, barely able to move its cold body from her side.

The Heartless blinks wearily up at her and nestles closer with a mildly annoyed chittering noise. A.. noise that is not so terrible as the swarms of demon tides or the darksides. A… noise of -

She shakes her head in disgust. Her head hurts. She’s not thinking straight. Her back hurts. She’s delirious with pain. These… new appendages ache and ache and… If the heartless has no intention of hurting her, which it must not if it took her attack as nothing more than a minor nuisance, she just wants… to drift away - let the realm of sleep cradle her away from the pains of existing in this crumbling, mutating biology in a mind that barely remembers anything from when she had been part of the light…

As she drifts to sleep, she admits: the weight of the creature next to her feels almost comforting.

When she wakes, her newborn appendages ache a little less, though her skin is still raw and crusted with blood. The shadow Heartless has left and her spine is twisted unnaturally; she must have adjusted to accommodate the new… things growing out of her body. A revolting thing to believe, that her body is already learning to assimilate this foreign bony child of darkness in her. As if responding to her thoughts, the flesh and bones unfurl and the faintest hint of a breeze licks her cold skin. She shivers in revulsion.

 _My heart is strong_ , she’d hissed at her phantoms, _I’m not a demon_ , she’d protested to the Heartless.

… Her master would be ashamed, if he knew…

...Could Terra and Ven ever recognize her, like this?

 _Terra_ , she pleads now, desperate. _Ven_ , she clings to the sounds, a flicker of hope wrestling forth like a dying flame in her heart.

Even as the paper-thin wings flap against her back and her enlarged claws flex, one by one, she clings to the names and delirious, she indulges herself in the phantoms of humans she catches in ruined worlds.

If she just…

If she could just remember their light, pick out the unbreakable threads tying her heart to theirs…

An idea carries over to her, like a whisper caught carried along a breeze in the cold air.

 _Of course_. Her skin has been caked with the soot and dirt of the Realm of Darkness; her skin has been bathed in endless pools of Heartless blood. All she’s done is coat herself in the very essence of the Realm for aeons; of _course_ her body is having a reaction. The whisper on the breeze whistlesaround her, twirling, before it sails slowly to the direction of a rotted, wooden door. With weary limbs, she limps forward, and though hordes ofHeartless appear in puffs of dark clouds around her, they merely watch the procession, enthralled.

 _Terra,_ she whispers, clinging to her last lifeline. _Ven, I - I’ll find you both, I promise._

The whistle dances around the door, and the air _trills_ with music when she steps in to gaze upon the black ocean.

This time, when she dips her claw into the inky black oil of the ocean, her flesh does not hiss or corrode. This time, when she slicks the water and scrubs the dirt and soot from her tattered clothes and her legs, the grime slowly rubs away to leave her skin feeling fresh. Every desire to scratch or itch or _kill_ is bleeding out from her as she steps forth to accept the dark ocean’s welcoming embrace.

The ocean, it pulls her in with ravenous glee, tugging her _down, down, down_ and —

* * *

When she awakes, she has been born anew.

The Realm of Darkness smiles at its new daughter, delighted.

**_Welcome, darkling_.**

…Darkling…? It sounds… familiar. Like an old wive’s tale. A myth an old man…? told her once? 

The world, it looks — a little bigger from this angle.

She flexes her claws - big thick black claws painted crimson at the tips, like bloody red scythes - and she’s delighted to find that the itching has stopped. Her skin is hardened like teflon, a thick enough leathery hide that her claws barely do more than leave indents in her palm when she clenches her fist. 

**_This is a new beginning_** , the Darkness says kindly. **_In this beginning, there will be no phantoms or enemies to hurt you_.**

In the rippled reflection of the inky ocean, she sees her blood stained teeth and gold-plated eyes. In the reflection, she sees an inky round face that she… recognizes as her own… Yes…

**_Go forth,_** the Darkness says. **_And find what your heart so desires, more than anything else in the world._**

Ah. Yes…

She smiles when she screeches and cries, “ _Terra_ …”

She laughs when she calls out, “ _Ven_ ….”.

But in the end, these are only noises, little echoes of imagined sounds that aren’t words. To a darkling, names don’t mean anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Hmmm, yeah... Nobody - not a single soul - wanted or asked for this. But that's the beauty of writing, baby! Self-indulgence! 
> 
> I’ve been completely uninspired by anything other than body horror/tragedy, so... this was born. I’ve wanted to write Aqua getting the full KHUX Darkling treatment for a long time (and am possibly considering incorporating the concept into a different story) but I wanted to test the waters out first. I just! love the concept of the KHUX Darklings! and I see no reason for why they went with Anti-Aqua instead of giving her the full canonically-consistent horror treatment! I also wanted it to be vaguely apparent that while the Keykids that turned to Darklings cried out for Lux because of their obsession with it, Aqua's 'lux' or light is and always has been her friends. So, I mean... Yup, that's what she gets to cry forever as a Darkling. Kinda feel bad because Aqua's a cutie and I really like her... but oh well.
> 
> I also wanted the transformation to be kind of brutal but I got really tired through the sprint and I was like, okay whatever just baptize her in the ocean and make her wake up a darkling, its fine.  
> 


End file.
